March 8, 2006: Death and Dying in Children's Fiction,
continued
I can't believe that one more book I read today was on this
theme. I thought I would only write about After the Rain by Norma Fox
Mazer, but today I picked up Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse and
discovered it, too, treated the subject of death, but in an entirely different
way. in After the Rain we see a lingering death from cancer. In Out of
the Dust the death is accidental. tragic and a bit quicker. But, of
course, both deaths profoundly affect the characters in the books.
 After the
Rain is the sort of book that you are still thinking about long after you
have finished reading it. It hit me especially hard, because I was reading it in
the anniversary week of my own mother's death last year, and I had been with her
in the days and hours leading up to her death. Hospice and 24-hour caregivers
had the bulk meeting Mom's physical needs, but I wanted to be there to support
her emotionally as she made her transition from this life to the next. I knew
she did not fear death itself, but in a cancer death one loses much before one
loses life. First the appetite goes. Then strength begins to ebb. And then one
has to face the fact that one will not get better no matter how strong the will
to live. And then one loses independence and dignity -- the worst losses.
At the beginning of After the Rain we meet
fifteen-year-old Rachel, a normal teenage Jewish girl who loves her family but
does not always appreciate their interactions with her (such as having her
parents continue to call her by their pet name for her --Mouse). She uses her
prodigal brother Jeremy, who lives far away as a sort of diary. She pours her
feelings out to him often in letters which she never really expects answers to
because, as Jeremy says, he never writes letters. Jeremy feels alienated from
his family somewhat because he's been married and divorced a few times and has
never held a steady job. On one visit he made just to spend time with his
grandfather, he came out of the meeting shaking. Grandfather had chided him
about his lifestyle and ended by laying almost a curse on Jeremy: "You're too
old now, The time is gone. You've lost your chance for a decent life. "
Grandfather is pretty hard for the rest of the family to get
along with, too. Rachel and her parents visit him every Sunday and Rachel also
calls him about once a week, but there are few safe subjects to talk about. To
quote from the book: "Driving nails into cement is probably an easier chore than
carrying on a conversation with Izzy." The weather is usually safe. The
same questions get asked in almost every conversation, and the always repeated
answers are predictable. Izzy has not spoken to his brother in years. So, I'm
sure you get the picture. He's not easy to talk to or visit. He assumes his
family calls and comes over because it's the right thing to do, but nobody takes
much joy in the visits, because grandfather takes them for granted but doesn't
open up and talk to them. They usually wind up playing Scrabble.
Izzy tries to stay in shape by walking four miles a day. (He's
in his 80s, as was my mother when she died.) He's had a bit of trouble with his
stomach and the doctors have done some tests, but the results aren't in yet.
Rachel's mother, Shirley takes Izzy to the hospital for some more tests. When
the doctor comes to release him, he tells the family he has a virus and Izzy
should go home and do whatever he feels like doing, even if the virus seems to
hang on a bit. Then the doctor calls and wants Shirley to come see him, and
Rachel goes along. That's when they find out Izzy has lung cancer. But the
doctor didn't tell them the truth in front of Izzy because he wants Izzy to
remain optimistic. There is no treatment that will help since the disease has
progressed too much and Izzy is too old for surgery (as it was with my own
mother.) The doctor sees no reason to tell Izzy, for it might take away
his will to live. Although the doctor admits he's not God and cannot be
absolutely sure, his medical opinion is that Izzy has but two or three more
months to live. This hits the family like a ton of bricks.
Was this a wise decision? When Mom got the bad news, she was
given only four weeks, and she couldn't believe it. It was good she had the
chance to adjust and to talk it out with family. It was good for us because we
could concentrate on spending more time with her and helping her do anything she
still wanted to do. It meant that my brother who lives five hours away and
usually only comes on holidays made the effort to spend his one day off coming
every Saturday to visit until she died. And it meant we could get help from
hospice and Mom could be at home with her family until the end. For that to
happen, the patient has to know what's ahead and choose hospice care. Izzy did
not have that chance. Reading this book showed me what it might have been like
the other way, and assures me we made the right choice.
Since Izzy doesn't know how sick he is, he continues to walk.
And one day when Rachel is home alone after school she gets a call from an Alice
Farnum, who tells her Izzy has fallen in front of her house and wants someone to
come get him. He won't hear of an ambulance, so Rachel calls her father and gets
only an answering machine. She doesn't want to panic her mother, so she walks
over to Alice's, but has no way to get Izzy back to his apartment. He won't let
them call a taxi and Alice doesn't have her car at home. So Izzy, as might be
expected insists on walking back. He doesn't want to let Rachel come with him,
but she insists on "wasting her time" as Izzy puts it. Shirley is upset when she
hears of the days events and calls Izzy to invite him to live with them, but he
sees no need for it. Rachel takes matters into her own hands and calls Izzy to
say she wants to walk with him the next day. He protests but she insists and
tells him to wait for her.
The walk the next day is pretty quiet. But the walks continue,
day after day, and gradually the two learn to talk to each other and Rachel
learns to love her grandfather. When her friends invite Rachel to a birthday
party for her best friend after school one day, she insists she can't come
because she must be with her grandfather. But when they get back to the
apartment after the walk, the friends are there with balloons and cake and
inform her they've brought the party to her. They come in and decorate the
apartment and eat cake and then put on records to dance. Rachel is not sure all
this is good for Grandpa, but he seems to join in the spirit of the thing and
tries to become the life of the party. Then Rachel's friend asks Izzie to dance
with her. Izzie tells everyone how he used to dance with his wife when she was
alive. He raises his hands and wiggles his hips. He's acting 60 years younger
and having a wonderful time. Then he says 'I used to pick my wife up with one
hand...put my hand on the floor...' He bends over, demonstrating. 'Like this.
She'd stand on it and ...I'd raise her. Pick her up... straight up in the
air....' and then Izzy tries to lift the somewhat heavy Helena off the
floor. Rachel can't bear to look. Izzy is puffing and straining to lift Helena.
Everyone has gone quiet. Izzy begins to sweat and his breath starts coming like
a bellows. Rachel yells for him to stop. he continues to lift until Helena is
off the ground, but his face is gray, sweating. He finally sets her down with a
thump. And he says "you...see,' and he smiles a strange smile which remains
frozen on his face after he finally sits down on the couch. The young people,
except for Rachel, make their exit, knowing that the party is over. Rachel
cleans up and wipes Izzy's face with a wet washcloth and covers him with a
blanket. She continues to sit there with him until after dark, until he wakes up
again and says, 'Still here? Go home darling.'
The next day is a beautiful day and Izzy wants to walk. They eat
some lunch at a small restaurant where Grandpa has a dish of his favorite walnut
maple ice cream, but he only has a couple of bites. They go back out on the
sidewalk and he suddenly stops and says he can't go any further and his face is
covered with sweat. Rachel gets him into a hardware store across the street and
the woman behind the counter gets a chair for him while Rachel calls her father.
By the time Rachel's' father Manny gets there, Izzy has recovered a bit and he
tells Manny, 'My granddaughter gave... me a beautiful...day.' This time Izzy
goes to the hospital for good, though the doctor assures him he'll be home soon.
Grandpa knows better, since he's already made Rachel tell him his diagnosis.
As Grandpa gets worse, Rachel is the only one who feels
comfortable with him because they have learned to communicate and she is not
afraid to be honest with him. She insists on staying away from school
while he's in the hospital so she can be with him -- over the objections of her
parents. She goes to school one day to explain everything to her teachers and to
get her work to do at the hospital. And she is adamant about staying with
Grandpa on his last night, after her parents leave and over their protests.
She senses he won't last until morning, and he doesn't. She experienced the
death watch as I did, only there were interruptions by doctors and nurses with
their procedures when they shooed Rachel out. It was evident how much Rachel's
presence there meant to Izzy -- and to Rachel herself. Grandpa knew she was no
longer caring for him out of duty but out of love, and that was a gift he
accepted. The people at hospice say a person chooses his time of death, so all
of us caring for mom while she was in her final coma were told to always tell
her when we were leaving or entering the room so she could die alone or with
someone. I'm convinced that Grandpa gave Rachel the gift of sharing his
departure. I won't go through the final arrangements or the family interactions
after Jeremy and brother Phil come home. For me it was the growth in both Rachel
and Izzy that were important. Rachel's watch brought back my own last
hours with Mom, reading to her from her Book of Common Prayer, knowing that
though she was in a coma, her sense of hearing was still there. And when it
became evident the end was very near, I called my brother and held the phone to
Mom's ear so he could say his final goodbye and give her permission to go
instead of trying to hold out until his next visit, which was still a few days
away.
This is the sort of book that leaves a lingering impact on the
reader. The death and dying are very realistic. And they take time. Rachel slows
her life down to fit Grandpa's needs just as she slowed her steps as she walked
with him. As they gave of themselves, they both grew more whole. In Out of
the Dust, Billie Jo, a 13-year-old who lives in Oklahoma's dust bowl in
poverty with her parents,
 loses
her mother in an accident. Her father left a can of kerosene by the stove, and
her ma thought it was water and poured it, to make coffee. It made instead "a
rope of fire." Billie Jo and her ma ran out of the kitchen, but then Billie Jo
ran back to get the burning pail to save the kitchen and threw it out the door,
not knowing her mother was on her way back in. Her pregnant mother caught fire
and Billie Jo threw herself on her to try to smother the flames to save her and
the baby. Ma slowly dies and is in pain all the time until she does. Billie Jo's
hands also get burned in the fire, and she can no longer play her mother's much
loved piano, which is how she has always worked out her emotions. As Biilie Jo
tells her tragic story of her mother's death, she explains it like this: "Daddy
found the money Ma kept squirreled in the kitchen under the threshold. It wasn't
very much. But it was enough for him to get good and drunk. He went out last
night. While Ma moaned and begged for her water. he drank up the emergency money
until it was gone....I tried to help her. I couldn't aim the dripping cloth into
her mouth. I couldn't squeeze. It hurt the blisters on my hands to try. I only
made it worse for Ma. She cried for the pain of the water running into her
sores, she cried for the water that would not soothe her throat and quench her
thirst, and the whole time my father was in Guymon drinking. "
The next day the grasshoppers come and eat everything green that
is left, including all the leaves and fruit on Ma's favorite apple trees. Billie
Jo writes "I couldn't tell her, couldn't bring myself to say her apples were
gone. I never had a chance....Ma died that day giving birth to my brother." The
brother also died. The neighbors came to help prepare the bodies for burial. The
Reverend led the service. The women came back to scrub and clean the house and
Billie Jo listened as they talked about her throwing the pail. And this is
Billie Jo's take on it: "'Billie Jo threw the pail,' they said. 'An accident,'
they said. Under their words a finger pointed....They didn't talk about my
father leaving kerosene by the stove. They didn't say a word about my father
drinking himself into a stupor while Ma writhed, begging for water. They only
said Billie Jo threw the pail of kerosene. "
The dust gets worse. Billie Jo misses her mother's touch
and the few words she used to speak. Billie Jo can't play her piano anymore
because of her burnt hands -- it's too painful. Billie Jo and her father can't
seem to talk to each other in their grief, so Billie Jo decides to go to
California to get out of the dust. By the time she gets to Arizona, after seeing
the poor everywhere along the way, she decides to go back home because she
realizes things won't really be better anywhere else. When she returns,
communication opens up with her father again, spring and rain come to settle the
dust and water the crops, and both father and daughter (after some initial
resistance on Billie Jo's part) open their hearts to the coming of a new woman
in the house. Billie Jo sums up her feelings near the end: "The way I see
it, hard times aren't only about money, or drought, or dust. Hard times are
about losing spirit, and hope, and what happens when dreams dry up" On the very
last page we see Billie Jo in the kitchen, waiting for Daddy to bring his new
friend over for dinner and she says: "I wipe the dust out of the roasting pan, I
wipe the dust off Ma's dishes, and wait for Daddy to drive in with Louise,
hoping she'll stay a little later, a little longer, waiting for the day when she
stays for good. "
As I ponder these two books, I know I'd rather be Rachel than
Billie Jo, who's life was hard even before her mother died. I've been where
Rachel was, except my mother and I did not need impending death to open our
hearts to each other. I cannot imagine watching a death such as Billie Jo had to
watch and being without the family support that both I and Rachel had.
Out of the Dust is written in blank verse, which makes it
a fast read. The form suits the content, for poetry is the perfect vehicle to
describe the dust that is everywhere, covering and killing everything, providing
the backdrop for the town's life. And it is also the ideal form for Billie Jo to
use to express the depth of her emotions without getting emotional. Both Rachel
and Billie Jo are people worth knowing -- people who have dealt with death
close up and and the grief that followed it and been able to work it through and
go on with their lives.
©2006, Barbara Radisavljevic
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